Explanation of the .ini files in the GPL folder by Bob Simpson

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player.iniHolds the settings that you use in the game, such as graphcis (resolution, detail bias sound level etc) as well as your PBs at all the original 11 tracks. Player.ini will actually hold all PBs of the tracks that show up in the Best Times menu in GPL, but if you change them, your PBs for tracks not appearing there any more will be lost unless you save a replay and use GPL Replay Analyzer to record them.

track.iniHolds some track dimensions such as the starting grid and pit stall layout as well as some AI parameters. For instance dlong_speed will make the AI slower or faster.

record.iniSimply holds the fastest lap recorded whether it's you or the AI or someone you raced against online. If you race as Graham Hill, the "real" Graham Hill AI will be listed as the same name.

driver.iniHas specific parameters for the AI behaviour. It's there that Jim Clark and Graham Hill will be given better skills. The driver.ini and car graphics need to match by the way since the 19 AI cars have drivers' names on them etc.

gpl_ai.iniHas AI parameters for the AI drivers in more general detail.

app.iniRecords the last rasterizer you used, the last player that raced and a sound quality setting.

gp.ini and 67season.iniHave the tracks included for the world championship mode and single race mode respectively.

core.iniHas graphics card, communications for
online racing and force feedback parameters that the user (you) should
edit for best gameplay.

Core.ini settings explained

I’ve been trying to think about what helps frames rates to be higher in GPL. There are many factors such as resolution, FSAA, graphics add-ons and graphics menu choices. I don’t know how much the core.ini settings affect frame rate, but the image should be affected as shown below. This is my interpretation of the readme and might be old news for many of you, but it’s taken me 2 years to roll up my sleeves and dive in (it’s really not that confusing). Newbies might find this enlightening, since I keep seeing the same questions pop up over and over.

My recommendations for a top end graphics card after studying the ReadmeD3D.txt from Papyrus, located in your sierra\gpl folder are:

(Note that settings for “lower end cards” might help to speed up frame rate, but the image might suffer as well. CPU speed and FSAA will determine which direction to go in as well, I think.)

"Quotes" from the readmed3d.txt

DisableZBuffer = 0....."To gain a significant frame rate improvement (about 60%) this D3D renderer will try to use - or not disable - a Z buffer to minimize state changes."

TossHighestMip = 0.....0 gives best, sharpest image / 1 for lower end cards "Setting to 1 will result in slightly more blurry textures when up close."

DirectMirrorRendering = 1.....Use 0 only for problems with image location (i.e. it’s in the corner of the screen)

AlphaThreshold = 1.....1 for better cards / 240 for lower end cards

TransparentMipsDrawOrder = 1.....1 for best image / 0 for lower end cards"With AT=240 and TMDO=0 trees look moth eaten. You can improve the appearance of trees and fences by drawing the transparent polygons from furthest to closest (TransparentMipsDrawOrder = 1), and then this allows you to draw the transparent edges of the trees and fences completely (AlphaThreshold = 1), but at the cost of a small framerate hit. If you've got a fast PC, use the latter settings."

TrilinearFiltering = 1.....1 for best image / 0 for lower end cards "non-single pass filtering, Setting this value to 0 will help speed up the framerate on slower cards"

LODBias = -50 .....Try 0 (blurrier), -50 (sharper), -100 (far textures tend to speckle). Aim for a setting that looks sharp without speckling. "100 brings lower mips exactly 1 mip level closer to the foreground making everything a bit blurrier and anything much lower than -50 starts to make the textures "speckle" a lot in the distance, even if they look sharper"

readmegl.txt (OpenGL values)

TossHighestMip = 0.....0 gives best, sharpest image / 1 for lower end cards (image will be blurry) - same as the D3D